Hillary Clinton officially announced her anticipated run for President on Sunday by video. Watch here or below:
Republicans were ready with a response.
“Americans need a president they can trust and voters do not trust Hillary Clinton. Over decades as a Washington insider, Clinton has left a trail of secrecy, scandal, and failed policies that can’t be erased from voters’ minds. The Clintons believe they can play by a different set of rules and think they’re above transparency, accountability, and ethics. Our next president must represent a higher standard, and that is not Hillary Clinton,” RNC Chair Reince Preibus said in a released statement.
“Clinton’s announcement comes in the shadows of looming investigations over deletion of State Department records and suspicious foreign donations. For weeks Clinton has stonewalled the American public on unanswered questions around these many scandals. As an official candidate, Clinton must come clean with the American people,” Preibus added. “Republicans have a strong and diverse set of candidates who will engage in a productive debate on how to move our country forward. Clinton’s coronation represents more of the same, and voters have made it clear they want a new direction.”
The RNC released their own video on Friday anticipating Clinton’s announcement.
“Let me be the first to welcome Mrs. Clinton to Iowa and the presidential race. After all, better late than never for her coronation as the Democratic nominee,” Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said.
Kaufmann said there is five questions that Clinton needs to answer for Iowans.
- How can someone who has been a D.C. insider for decades bring the fresh perspective we so desperately need in Washington?
- How are Iowans supposed to trust you when your decades in D.C. have been marked with endless scandal and controversy?
- How can we trust you when your Foundation currently accepts millions from foreign governments and did so during your tenure as Secretary of State?
- How can we trust you when, as Secretary of State, you deliberately ignored rules, deleted 30,000 emails to avoid release and put national security information at risk?
- How can we trust you with America’s foreign policy when the decisions you and President Obama made have led to a more dangerous and unstable world than when you started as Secretary of State?
Mitt Romney called her a creature of Washington.
Pundit reaction is mixed. The liberal New Yorker Magazine’s Jonathan Chait explained how she was going to win. You can pretty much discount everything he said leading up to his final paragraph as it shows you just how skewed he is.
The argument for Clinton in 2016 is that she is the candidate of the only major American political party not run by lunatics. There is only one choice for voters who want a president who accepts climate science and rejects voodoo economics, and whose domestic platform would not engineer the largest upward redistribution of resources in American history. Even if the relatively sober Jeb Bush wins the nomination, he will have to accommodate himself to his party’s barking-mad consensus. She is non-crazy America’s choice by default. And it is not necessarily an exciting choice, but it is an easy one, and a proposition behind which she will probably command a majority.
Oy vey…
An op/ed in Salon of all places by a two-time Democrat nominee for Governor in Connecticut of all people says she’s running a losing campaign already. The New York Post reminded its readers of every scandal she’s been involved with.
Polling certainly looks interesting.
In North Carolina it’s definitely a toss up according to a new poll there by Public Policy Polling. President Obama won North Carolina in 2008, but lost to Mitt Romney there in 2012. Colorado shows a close race with Clinton trailing in head to heads with Scott Walker, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. She is tied with Mike Huckabee. In Iowa the biggest lead in head to head match-ups is four points, but that Quinnipiac poll shows Clinton trailing Paul by 1. Clinton has a larger edge in Virginia, but still in single digits in head to head match-ups except with Ted Cruz where she leads by 10 points. In the latest national polling her leads are in the single digits.
Reasonable adults will and should call this race a toss-up, which it really is.